It took a while to figure it all out, but I finally decided to go ahead and take the top eight tags from the inaugural “Tag It” Story experiment, which was driven by a user poll. You can see the results here! Today, I thought I’d share with you the opening to the story. It’s turned out a deal longer than I expected, and I’ll be strongly considering tightening it up before final release, but for now, consider this a rough draft opening to give you a little teaser as to what may be going on :3 I hope you enjoy!
A little shock still ran through Susan the first time she saw her each visit. Never so bad as the first time, of course, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever quite get used to the sight of Vela bounding onto the scene.
The first time, she was told, had been a complete accident. The elves were usually very careful, or as careful as elves ever can be, to present themselves well on Visitation Day, meaning clothes, and putting away whatever they thought might be offensive to stuffy human sensibilities. Vela, apparently, fell under this heading. Rather accurately, as it turned out.
She could still remember that peculiar mixture of stark terror and incredulous confusion. Susan had just been closing up her little stand for the day when a creature, rich reddish brown, covered in fur, loped abruptly into the middle of the square, carrying a dead chicken in her mouth.
Susan had screamed. She’d heard tales of werewolves, terrible beasts that stalked the night, a cross between man and wolf created by dread witches as bodyguards and weapons. She’d recognized the creature as something out of nightmares and flung herself behind her cart.
At the time, most of the elves had found it quite amusing, and Vela’s handlers had been embarrassed they’d let her slip free. Vela herself had been confused and intrigued, and she’d tried to offer the cowering human behind the cart her fowl bounty. Shaking, Susan had stared at her, her legs utterly useless under her. Under the terror, she couldn’t help but wonder– why did this werewolf have such absurdly large breasts, and a–
Well, these days, Vela wore a wrap round her chest and a sturdy loincloth. She refused to wear more, as it became too stifling and hot, but it was enough to let Susan look at her without blushing. When that wasn’t an issue for other reasons.
I’ve slipped into a more leisurely, novel-style form of writing with this one, it would seem. It’s led to an awful lot of exposition and character development before the sex, even by my standards. I’m curious what my readers would think of it, but at the same time, part of me remembers the old adage of writing that if you can chop off the first half of the story and things still make sense, you probably should. I’m not sure that would completely apply here, but I’m deliberating heavily on that point.
Lithier 